Is Smart Slider 3 the Best WordPress Slider Plugin?

I rarely write plugin reviews, and I never write about sliders. But today I’m making an exception for Smart Slider 3.

It’s not just the best slider plugin available, it’s also an example to all free and premium plugin makers of how a plugin should be made.

So let’s take a look at why I think Smart Slider 3 is fantastic.

Note: This is not a paid review. I genuinely liked the plugin so much I wanted to share why with you. There’s a free version of Smart Slider available, which offers more features than most premium plugins, so if you’re just interested in the free version read on – I’ll let you know when I get to the paid features.

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What is Smart Slider 3?

Smart Slider 3 is a plugin you can use to create sliders and place them anywhere on your website. You can put together anything you want with its powerful builder interface, fine-tuned animations between slides and – with the pro version – create layer item animations to get things moving within sliders.

I’ve seen plugins that can do this before, but not like this. Smart Slider looks and feels like Sketch 3. When I started using Sketch instead of Photoshop, my feeling was: “Why has this not been done before?!” Smart Slider brings the interface and ease of use of Sketch (layers, property inspector, previews) to slider creation.

The slide editing interface

A Bit About Sliders

Before we delve deeper into the plugin, I have to lay the groundwork: I hate sliders.

I hate them in the same way some people hate baby photos, food photos or selfies: There’s nothing wrong with taking these photos, but the constant onslaught of them can be overwhelming.

There has been a lot of research into sliders and how they are detrimental to conversions and SEO. I think the biggest problem is that almost all premium themes have a slider on the front page. It is great eye candy so when someone buys a theme they just start using it without thinking, which is a problem because there is only one thing worse than an unnecessary slider, and that’s a badly made slider.

I think that low-quality sliders are a big contributor to lower conversions. I’ve noticed in my own browsing behavior that I have stayed longer on a website to view the contents of a visually striking slider.

In the end, I have to admit that I think sliders do have their place. If you use them smartly (no pun intended) they can be a valuable asset to your site. If you use them poorly, however, they will lower your conversions and hurt you SEO – just like any other element on your page.

In addition, Smart Slider allows you to create visuals that aren’t slides You can create a single slide slider with animations, allowing you to create elements that look like static images with small subtle animations to catch a visitor’s eye.

A Bit About Premium Plugins

Now that I’ve vented most of my anger at sliders, let me release the leftovers on premium plugins.

I’ve noticed that a lot of available premium plugins are simply not good – not when you take into account people are making money with them. This is especially true for a plugin that tackles extremely difficult UI concepts like sliders.

Plugin authors seemingly tend to not care about user experience and all they want is a quick buck. When you buy a premium app like Evernote or Sketch, you expect the interface and additional features (like the help system, settings management, etc.) to be just as polished as the rest of the product – you expect quality.

Smart Slider delivers on this as well. From the initial introduction video to the website, its icon, its templates, help system and general user interface, you can see that someone sat down and thought about it all and applied the spit and polish needed to make a proper product, as opposed to something that looks like your neighbor put it together yesterday.

Creating a Slider

Initially, you’ll be greeted with your sliders on the left and helpful resources on the right. This screen already shows the attention to detail I like about this plugin. You can order your sliders by name or by creation date. You can also choose a bunch of handy little actions on the right but the main action is a lot larger and more noticeable with a pleasant design.

Note how all of the action buttons that you use to add a slider are green, secondary importance action buttons are blue, and the rest are grey. Very intuitive.

The initial view

Adding a Sample Slider

If you have the free version you’ll have access to four free sliders. If you have the pro version you’ll get access to a library of 100+ pre-built sliders, which can give you a great starting point.

Some sample sliders

Sliders From Scratch

If you want to start a new project you start by selecting a template. Free users have access to four while pro users have 11 at their disposal.

Create a slider

Once created, you can get started by setting general options and adding slides. You’ll probably want to fiddle around with general settings initially and then modify them as needed once you’ve created some sliders.

Slider Options

Two tabbed sections give you access to a wealth of options. The first section sets actual settings, the second section focuses on visuals.

The first section allows you to change general settings, size, autoplay, layer animation, optimization, advanced and other settings.

Smart Slider General Settings

The second section gives you control over the UI elements created by the slider. Arrows, bullets, autoplay controls, thumbnails, shadows and more.

Smart Slider visual settings

Slide Setup

Most of your time will be spent within the slide editor assembling your slide. While Smart Slider is responsive the interface is best at high resolutions. Your layers will be listed on the left.

Hover over any layer to see it highlighted in the preview area. Click on a layer to bring up its details in the panel below where you’ll be able to modify the item details, animations (for pro users) and layer settings.

You can use the visual editor to reposition the layer by dragging and dropping. You can – of course – achieve the same result using the positioning options in the layer tab. Another little detail: Undoing with cmd + z works just fine – a nice touch.

To add a new element, just click the buttons at the top. Free users can choose from six elements: Image, heading, text, button, Vimeo and Youtube. Pro users have an additional nine elements to choose from: List, icon, caption, transition, iframe, video, HTML and area.

The Slide Editor

Clicking on an element will add it to the layer list and the preview. Start editing right away and see everything in real-time in the preview. Each element has a bunch of further options you can tweak to your heart’s content. This is another area where Smart Slider shines. Take a look at the font settings for an element:

Font Settings

Not only can you set colors, line heights, spacing and other items, you can preview it right there, add extra CSS and choose from presets on the right. You can even save your settings as a new preset, which will minimize the time you need to spend on your elements if you have a bunch of similar ones.

Above the preview area you can find settings for the slide itself. A name, description and link can be set, in addition to background, animation and other options.

The preview area itself has some handy controls. You can turn snapping on/off, display a dark backdrop, set alignments, hide layers and more. Even more useful are the controls to view your slide in desktop, tablet and mobile view. By the way, right-click on any element in the preview to delete/copy/duplicate the layer.

Animating Layers

The pro version gives you advanced animation options to get your layers moving. The result is best displayed on one of the sliders on the Smart Slider home page.

Smart Slider animations

When creating animations you can set in/out/loop animations and handle events like click, mouse enter, mouse leave, play and more. You can place your animations on a timeline that supports dragging and dropping.

This essentially turns Smart Slider into something similar to a video editor. The process is essentially the same, you place events on a timeline which tells you when an event starts, how long it takes and when it ends.

Animating layers is a complex process but Smart Sliders UI makes it a smooth and enjoyable process.

Animation Timeline

Once done, each slider can be inserted via a shortcode, using the Smart Slider icon in the post editor or using PHP code. You’ll see everything you need to use these above the general options in the slider.

Why Smart Slider Is So Great

Smart Slider is now in my top three favorite plugins. Big call, but it is the best example of what a premium plugin should look like.

It has a user interface that has obviously been split tested and informed by user input. Elements like checkboxes, radio buttons, selectors and other fields don’t seem out of place; the whole experience is fluid and unified.

The pro activation process is extremely simple. You don’t even need to go to a special activation page. I first bumped into the need for activation when I wanted to import a test slider. I got a little window telling me what’s what with a text field right there. I pasted the code, pressed “OK” and it was activated and I was taken to the test sliders.

Another amazing aspect of the plugin is how fast its JavaScript is. In saying that, creating JavaScript that lets you handle everything from slider creation to animation, display it and live preview it is complex is a gross understatement. Ensuring that user interactions in the admin and slide display in the front-end is nothing short of a miracle.

Wrapping Up

Smart Slider is what I want all plugins to be, and what I think all plugins should aspire to be. Would you be OK with the Airbnb application or Evernote being sub-par just because it was free? I know I wouldn’t. It seems, finally, WordPress plugin development is reaching the quality that desktop and mobile applications have spoiled us with.

If you need to create sliders or want a single image with subtle animations on your website Smart Slider 3 provides the solution, no matter what you want to accomplish. I can heartily recommend the free version. It already provides more functionality than any other slider plugin – even many premium ones.

If you need the power of the pro version or want to support the development of amazing software take a look a the pro version, you won’t be disappointed.

Daniel builds plugins, themes and apps – then proceeds to write or talk about them. He's the editor for the WordPress section at Smashing Magazine and he writes for a bunch of other online magazines. When not coding or writing, you'll find him playing board games or running with his dog.

20 Responses

Wow! What a beautiful slider plugin. This is probably the best I have seen.

I think the slides and sliders you can create with this would go beyond what many people think of, when they think of a slider on a website. I am inspired, from looking at their demo. My first thought was “Yes! That is what I want!”

Daniel David is also incredible in the way he supports it, as well as how he implements user feedback. SS3 was a long time in the making. The team at SS3 took great care to put out a top notch product and bounced ideas off of the special BETA group they had set up (as well as taking input).

I am a paid customer since SS2. One of the best purchases I ever made. Daniel is a super nice guy to boot. Highly recommend this to anyone looking for a quality slider solution. I believe you’ll be quite happy with Smart Slider 3.

I’ve had this one for a while, and honestly, there isn’t another plugin on the market with the depth of features. It really is amazing. And the performance, while not the best in the slider market, is very good.

I will say that all the options CAN become a little overwhelming since you get taken from one screen to another and it can be difficult to figure out how to get back. But once you do it a few times, it is easier.

You didn’t mention pricing – unless I missed it. When I read an article about a product it is nice to know how much it costs so I can decide to keep reading or not. Free is always good – but looks like Pro is what you recommend.

When I went to their website to find pricing I had to click on Buy Now button to see the price. I wish vendors would be more upfront with pricing. It looks like it will cost $100 per site if you want to include Smart Slider on a client site? Or is the extended license only if you are creating a theme and selling the theme? For $100 Pro lifetime license you can put on 10 sites. I wonder if that includes client sites? If you put on a site and then remove it from the site, I wonder if you can reuse that license on another site.

I know these questions are for the Smart Slider people… I scanned their FAQ but didn’t see what I was looking for. There are a lot of slider options out there, including several robust free sliders. Thanks for the review. I’ll have to go to Smart Slider website again to learn more. Thank you.

Predrag – I personally like it when a reviewer mentions a price or price range as part of the review – even if they are not “promoting” the product for gain. I don’t want to waste time reading an article only to find out the price is out of my budget. If Daniel said there is a Free version and a Pro version with pricing starting at $25… or The Pro version is $25 for one site and $100 for ten sites with Lifetime upgrades, then I could read the article with a better perspective. If, the price was $250 (which it isn’t), then I may skip the article because there is no way I want to pay $250 for a slider. That is all I am saying… too many articles to read, not enough time… help me prioritize by mentioning the price range. If within my budget, I read… if not, I skip. :-)

The extended license is basically for theme developers, but I modified the FAQ for better understanding. You can install it on your client’s site with the smallest plan too. If something is not clear please feel free to contact with me, I’ll help. Here is my email: [email protected]

I’m Daniel David the designer of the Smart Slider 3. Firstly thanks a lot for your review, we’re very happy to be featured on WPMU DEV!

In the past years we put a lot of energy into making Smart Slider one of the best WordPress slider on the market. But of course we know that we have to constantly work on new updates and ideas to make the core building experience better. If you have any idea or constructive criticism please feel free to share your with me! Here is my mail: [email protected]

I’m curious about how this compares to Revolution Slider as well. Rev Slider has as ton of options but IMHO, most of them are overkill. Not to mention despite the attempt to constantly optimize it, it still seems quite bloated. I’ve yet to find a full width slider that can just center text and have a nice call to action button without getting into complicated layers and all that jazz. Rev Slider for example doesn’t do the best job on mobile.